Red Front
Gold Member
- Jul 7, 2022
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- #121
What you fail to grasp is that when the consumer has complete control over the means of production, the state is no longer needed, it becomes superfluous. The state bureaucracy's purpose in socialism is a revolutionary, militant one, designed to socialize, democratize and eventually when technology permits, completely personalize the production of all consumer goods (the goods that we must consume to exist). In pursuit of the communist ideal of personal autonomy in production, the socialist state centrally plans the economy and protects the interests of the working class or proletariat against the bourgeoisie (capitalist-owner class, the exploiters of human labor) . The socialist state is the dictatorship of the proletariat (a socioeconomic class of people, that draws their sustenance from what they produce through their own labor without exploiting the labor of others). One of the functions of the socialist state is designed to organize labor and its production, and distribute what is produced to meet their needs (for Marxists legitimate wants are needs, we make no distinction between the two).
The state under capitalism is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or of the capitalists. Oligarchy, plutocracy, the rule of the rich at the expense of everyone else. The profits and resources are privatized, and the losses are made public. The people pay the price to maintain the privileged position of the rich ruling elite, by bailing them out when there's an economic crisis and fighting and dying to defend their market share and wealth through many wars.
When the individual consumer has complete control over the means of production, thanks to advanced technology, the purpose of the state, which is for the reasons described above, becomes superfluous. That doesn't imply however that there can't be a governing body. Government and state aren't the same. How is a government going to oppress or persecute someone who can essentially live anywhere? A group of families can organize a community anywhere, without relying on anyone. Governments would form only when people support them and want them. Technology will allow that in the not too distant future:
All human relationships, with few exceptions (children with their parents) will be 100% voluntary. Truly "FREE CHOICE". How do you control people that can produce whatever they need to consume, on their own, without anyone's assistance? Even the machinery can be manufactured by the consumer.
Marx, Engels, and their followers (particularly Lenin) had no faith in the social contract theory as the origin of the state. They viewed the origin of the state from material conditions which they termed "economic conditions". They divided the development of society into the old communist social system, slave society, feudal society, and industrial society. In the old communist society, there was no state because there was no private property. Private property isn't personal property, don't confuse the two.
Private Property
Private property, to a communist, is not your shoes or toothbrush, or even your house. Those things are called personal property and under socialism and under communism they continue to belong to workers in much the same manner as they do now. When Marxists speak of private property under capi
www.workers.org
The owners of private property felt insecurity as to its protection and they felt the necessity to form an authority and power, which could provide protection. That's "the state".
How did the state serve the interests of private property owners?
- As soon as there was private property, there appeared, two classes of men, one was the owner of property and the other was without property.
The haves and have-nots, masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited, were created mostly through the development of mass agriculture, unlike in hunter-gatherer tribal societies, where everyone lived and worked together in very close-knit communities to survive in very harsh conditions, and every member of the tribe, at least owned their own tent, hut, or personal space in the cave, and some personal property. Agricultural production, the mass cultivation of lands..etc, changed all of that.
- The conflict between the haves and have-nots, master and slaves, became prominent. Property owners wanted to exploit and subjugate the other class.
- Property owners created a force within society that ultimately assumed the status of state.
From the study of history, Marx and Engels have concluded that the state for all practical purposes was set up in the primitive slave society. Because in the slave society there were mainly two classes, the owners of slaves and the slaves themselves. The owners of the slaves required an organization to control and dominate slaves.
Engels in his book, The Origin of Family, Private Property and State has elaborately analysed the origin and development of state. The state is not something coming out of society. It is rather the product of society. He writes:
“The state is, by no means, a power forced on society from without… Rather it is a product of society at a certain stage of development”.
People inhabiting in society laid the foundation of state for the realisation of their class interests. What is the class interest and how could the state fulfill this? Engels in this book has categorically stated that the interests of the owners of property are at diametrically opposite to those who are not the owners; because of this there were clashes of interests between these two classes and the interests were irreconcilable.
At the same time, there developed an animosity between these two classes and again this antagonism could not be settled. All these led to a situation that necessitated a state structure. The owners of property came to be regarded as a separate class whose sole aims were to control the persons who were not the owners of property and to devise a mechanism whose chief function would be to help the property owners. The state in this way was created as public power.
The man-made state had two main functions:
- To provide security to the owners of wealth or owners of means of production and to collect taxes from the members of society. Engels has further observed that though the state is the product of society, slowly but steadily it became the owner of enormous power and it stood above society.
But though the state stood above the society it was always friendly with the owners of property. We, therefore, conclude that the state is the outcome of human contrivance and was made with specific aims. It is clear that according to Marx and Engels the origin of the state has nothing to do with the social contract or the divine right theory.
STATE VS GOVERNMENT
"A state can be distinguished from a government. The state is the organization while the government is the particular group of people, the administrative bureaucracy that controls the state apparatus at a given time.[41][42][43] That is, governments are the means through which state power is employed. States are served by a continuous succession of different governments.[43] States are immaterial and nonphysical social objects, whereas governments are groups of people with certain coercive powers.[44] "
Stateless doesn't imply "without a governing body or authority". A community can still have a governing body in communism. However, there are no more socioeconomic classes and the creation and functioning of governments depend solely on the consent of the governed. As mentioned earlier, a government can't violate the consensual relationship due to the consumer having complete control over the means of production. That person in many ways is a sovereign entity that can exist and survive anywhere, as a result of advanced production technology. The more advanced technology becomes, the less there is a need for a state. Why would anyone steal from you when they have access to their own resources? Everyone will live in abundance, and non-scarcity, hence many of the functions of the state are unnecessary.
“The state is the institution or complex of institutions which bases itself on the availability of forcible coercion by special agencies of society in order to maintain the dominance of a ruling class, preserve the existing property relations from basic change and keep all other classes in subjection.” Marx Capital
Again, when socioeconomic classes are eliminated, the state becomes superfluous.
I know you will flippantly dismiss everything written above, but that's fine, because I'm not writing for you, but for those who are interested in learning about socialism.
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